Normally I am one of the early adopters of new internet services and technologies, but Twitter was an exception. I first came across the service in mid- to late 2006, but did not really believe in it at that time. The main reason was probably that I did not know many other people who were using Twitter, and I did not see the added value yet. Only on June 8, 2007 at 2:05 PM I sent my first Twitter message into the world to give it a try. And I was convinced pretty quickly: Six months later I have posted 1001 messages, I am following 65 people and 105 people are following me. That’s not a lot by the way, the number one is probably fellow Dutchman Erwin Blom who managed to write over 15,500 tweets over the past 12 months!

In case you don’t know yet what Twitter is, the best way to describe it is as micro-blogging. Basically, you can send a short message to all your followers (they used to be called friends when the service launched), with a maximum of 140 characters. So you are forced to keep your messages simple and short, or to use more than one Tweet (= a twitter message). People use Twitter to tell others what they are thinking, to ask questions or to comment on what they are doing. Sometimes whole discussions start, or people are live commenting on TV programs or sport matches. I mainly use it to describe what I am doing, focusing on private life and less on business, and I occasionally join a discussion on Twitter.

The nice thing about Twittering is that you can do it everywhere. Most of my Tweets I sent from my mobile phone over the internet. You can also use SMS for this, but that’s way too expensive from China. Whenever something happens you can immediately inform others about it, unlike with a blog post that I normally write on my laptop (I can of course write a blog post on my phone, but that’s a hassle). Therefore the content of my Twitter feed is very different from my blog. Twitter normally only shows what I am doing (very descriptive), my blog also has descriptive posts but combines that with an opinion about these things. On Twitter I hardly ever give my opinion, there is just not enough space for that in 140 characters.

I mainly Twitter on weekends or on weekday nights. I do not very often send Tweets into the world during working hours, I guess I am too preoccupied with other (=more important) things.

To me Twitter is fun, a new way of expressing yourself, of getting to know other people and for other people to get to know you. Several of the people that I follow on Twitter I have never met in real life, but if I would meet them I would probably know them better than many of my real life friends. During PICNIC07 I met several of my followers, and it’s interesting to see how quickly you can connect, because you basically already know each other.

Some people start blogging less because of Twitter, but I think for me there is not a direct relationship. I might not post about some things because I already twittered about them, but generally I don’t think the number of posts diminished. Twittering is something that you do quickly, you can write a tweet in 10 seconds. A blog post normally takes me an average of 15-20 minutes. You think about a blog post before you write it, a tweet is just a line that you send into the world.

People sometimes ask me whether I don’t care about privacy when they read my Tweets. Honestly, I don’t believe in privacy anymore. The world has changed over the past 10 years, and most kids that grew up with the internet put their whole life online on MySpace and Facebook. People of my generation (I feel old when I write this, and I am only 35) seem to be more conservative, except for the ones that also ‘live’ on the internet. Interesting, the most active Twitterers are normally people who run their own business or work for smaller web-related companies. I don’t know many people working for multinationals that have an active Twitter feed, they literally live in a different world (and that’s why many multinationals will have a hard time to stay competitive in this changing web 2.0 world , but that’s a different story). And to come back to privacy, only the things you want to share you post online. Some people go a bit further than I do, however. Take a look for example at this x-rated Tweet from one of my followers!

I like Twitter, and hope it will keep on growing as a service. It’s not for everybody, just like blogging is not for everyone. But it’s much easier to keep up your Twitter posts, than to keep writing a blog over a longer period of time. If you want to check out Twitter go to Twitter.com and set up an account. If you want to follow me, go to http://twitter.com/marcvanderchijs and click on the follow button. And of course you can also read my latest Tweets on the right hand sight of my blog. Happy Twittering!

Tudou.com has started encoding all its video files to the H.264 format. Tudou is the first video site worldwide that is adapting to this standard on a large scale. This is technically a very significant step, that will mean a further improvement in the user experience.

H.264 means that the images in video files will be much clearer. Especially in videos with fast moving images such as sports footage, or rich images like scenaries you will see a huge difference. Tudou can now streams clips in a quality that is similar to TV quality.

In order to watch the video’s in the H.264 format, users will have to upgrade to Flash version 9. If they have an older version they can still watch every clip in the flv format.

Although most Chinese do not celebrate Christmas (most even have no idea what it is about), Shanghai’s retail sector fully embraces the event. Christmast decorations and christmas trees are popping up in most restaurants and shops, and all shopping malls have turned to Christmas music already.

On Sunday afternoon I walked by Times Square on Huaihai Lu when I came across this HUGE christmas tree. The workers were decorating it from the inside (it is of course a fake tree), and they were almost finished when I was there. Only the top part was still missing. It looked quite impressive already, and I can imagine that it must be even better at night. I will take some pictures if I drop by again in the evening one of these days

Although I have lived in Shanghai for many years, I had never been to the Shanghai Museum. It never really interested me, because the collection mainly consists mainly of Chinese calligraphy, coins, pottery, furniture and some classical paintings. I very much like art, but for some reason Chinese art never managed to attract me. Just like I don’t like European medieval or religious art. However, because of an exhibition of Dutch Golden Age paintings I decided to visit the museum.

The museum itself was indeed not that impressive, although some of the buddhist sculptures were quite interesting. But the Rembrandt exhibition made up for this. Spill Group Asia had been asked by sponsor ING to do the official exhibition website (and the game on it), so I knew quite a bit about it already.

Contrary to what most visitors expect, only 2 of the paintings were actually made by Rembrandt, all the others are from contempories such as Jan Steen and Frans Hals. They are all part of the Dutch Rijksmuseum collection, and this is the first time that any of them are on display in China. Next to paintings there are also quite some prints (all from Rembrandt I think), and there is some Delft Blue porcelain on display.

It was quite busy at the exhibition, mainly with local Chinese who came especially to see this collection (I assume this, because the rest of the museum was almost deserted). I suppose Saturday afternoon is not the best time to visit an exhibition, but if you do not mind waiting a bit sometimes to get a good view of all the art objects, it was still OK. The exhibition is open daily from 9 AM to 5 PM (ticket sales stop at 4 PM) until February 13, 2008. The entrance fee is a modest RMB 20, and for that price you can not only see the exhibition, but also the rest of the Shanghai Museum.

I came across an interesting article on the Pacific Epoch site today. Kingsoft, a software and online game developer that is listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, is using an innovative way to attract new staff. In order to apply for jobs for their game Hero108, you not only need a high school diploma, but you also need a certain rank and scores in the game itself. If you don’t achieve those scores, you won’t be able to apply for the job. I am sure this will attract lots of attention for the game, although I wonder if you will really find the best candidates in this way.

At the same time the company also made a deal with Yahoo China. Applicants for positions in Kingsoft are only considered if they send out their resumes using a Chinese Yahoo email address. A creative way to get more people to use Yahoo mail, but probably not one that will have a long-lasting effect. Yahoo actually made deals with several other online gaming companies as well, such as The9 (World of Warcraft), Perfect World, NineYou and Ourgame. The article did not state if those deals were for job applications through Yahoo or for other purposes. A very strange marketing strategy in my opinion.

I like a physical challenge every now and then, so this morning I ran the Shanghai Half Marathon (21.1 km), starting at Nanjing Dong Lu and ending at Minhang Stadium. Because of the knee injury that I got in Tibet I had not been able to practice for almost half a year, and only 6 weeks ago I started training seriously again. Actually too short to run a half marathon, and certainly too short for a full marathon, so I dropped the idea to participate in the full 42.2 km event. And that was a good idea, because the half marathon was hard enough.

The start was at 7:30 AM, and I was surprised to see that former Dutch prime minister Ruud Lubbers was the starter! I knew that Mr. Lubbers was in Shanghai (I got invitations for both a breakfast and a dinner, probably like many other Dutch business people here, but did not go), but had not expected him to to see him here. Later I noticed that a large group of Dutch runners participated (The Rotterdam Ambassadors), maybe this was related?

I had a good starting position, and 15 seconds after the start I passed the start line already. Immediately I started with a relatively high speed, and it felt good. However, my shin splints started to play up a bit, and I had to reduce the speed in order to make the pain more manageable. It took a few kilometers before the pain went away, but then I also started to realize that I had started to quick. The first 5 km I ran in about 22 minutes, and then I slowed down a bit. At 6 km I clocked in at 27 minutes, and I stayed in that tempo.

The weather was nice (about 15 degrees and sunny), but I still needed to drink a lot. I know that I need a lot more water than most other runners in order not to dehydrate (see also what happened in the Macau marathon a year ago), and every 5 km I made a short stop to drink at least one cup of water or energy drink. Especially after 10 km and 15 km I felt a lot better a few minutes after drinking some fluids.

Like two years ago (when I ran the full marathon here) the traffic police did a terrible job, and for several kilometers the runners had to run in the fumes of cars that were stuck in traffic jams caused by the marathon. Why they cannot close some roads in advance I don’t understand. Two years ago I sort of decided not to run Shanghai anymore because of this, and although the problem during the half marathon is not as bad as during the full one, it’s probably not very healthy to run here.

Overall the race was not easy, and especially the last 7 kilometers were quite difficult. Then you realize you did not practice enough, and certainly not at higher running speeds. But ‘no pain, no gain’, so I pretended not to feel my legs and kept the same speed. The last 500 meters I gave everything I had, and passed several other runners that had been in front of me for the past kilometers. I finished in 1:42:14 (after time correction), which means an average speed of almost 12.4 km/h. Better than I thought, because I went out on a 1:50 schedule, and in my mind I would have been happy to finish within 2 hours. Next time that I run I will practice a bit more though.

Thanks to my wife and to Gary who both got up very early to support me today. They drove me to the start, tried to meet me half way (they were one minute too late, because I was far ahead of schedule) and they supplied me with food and drinks afterwards. Gary, next year you should also run!

Some Shanghai Marathon pictures can be found here.

For many years I have said (probably also on this blog) that I never want a driver. I prefer to drive myself, and don’t want to lose the little bit of privacy that is still left in this Web 2.0 era. Well, since a few weeks I have a driver, and I have changed my point of view. The reason we decided to hire one is because my wife is now so pregnant that she cannot drive anymore. And because she often has to work late at night (she is CFO of Tudou.com) she does not want to walk around in the dark looking for taxi’s. Also, when the baby will be born it will be much more convenient for my wife to get around. So finally I gave in and she hired a Shanghainese driver.

Having one makes traveling around Shanghai certainly a lot more convenient. I can work or write blog posts (like right now) from the back seat of my car while listening to my own music. If I need him he is there within a few minutes, the car is always washed and I never have to get gas anymore. It certainly makes me more productive (I cannot sit in a car doing nothing), and that already compensates the cost of the driver. Furthermore he can do small tasks for us, like going to the post office or the bank, or paying bills. The negative side is that everybody in my office probably knows where I have lunch, where I have meetings and what time I come and go to the office. Not a big deal, because I don’t really believe in the concept of privacy anyway (hence this blog), but it feels a bit strange at first.

What I have to get used to, however, is that he is a bit stubborn and claims to know the quickest way in Shanghai. Well, I am stubborn as well, and he does not always fully agree with my decisions (too bad for him of course). Also his driving style is a bit too aggressive (blowing the horn every 500 meters or so, never breaking for pedestrians even when they clearly have the right of way), but at least that’s better than a passive driver who would brake when a traffic light is still green. He used to be the driver of the boss of a state-owned enterprise, maybe there they teach their drivers to be pro-active and not to care for other drivers in their driving style. Overall the experience in the first weeks was quite positive, let’s see how I feel about it in a few months.